Shangri-La

Duo is the better format for YACHT

The YACHT formation from Portland, Oregon, now gaining a lot of attention, is an initiation of a man called Jon Bechtolt. In the beginning, John was working on it all by himself and between 2002 and 2008 released three albums none of which has ever reached a big audience. Following that, YACHT adopted another constant member, singer Clair Evans, for a major turnaround. The musicians signed a contract with a rather serious label to start preparation of the first album by YACHT as a duo. The See Mystery Lights CD saw the light of days in 2009 to gather praiseful reviews all over the place as critics regarded the band’s potential as very promising. YACHT continued working as a duo, but regularly recruited a band of instrumentalists for their live shows. In 2011, the Americans released another long player, Shangri-La. According to the project’s leader Bechtolt, this is their most professionally recorded and matures work which involved the state-of-art equipment.

They dance and pay no mind to the end of the world

Right at the beginning of the new album, YACHT put against each other the tracks Utopia, and Dystopia (The Earth Is On Fire), as they made a conceptual mess out of apocalypse, love, global warming, faith and happiness. Apparently, an issue can be as bitter as anything, the band will still bring it up in its trademark dance wrapping. Truth is this time they do much more than just making hard electronic sound. It is quite possible that one day it will be not a duo, but a real multi-member band for they use too many different instruments. Although the sonic arsenal is truly mighty here, what drags the while attention is the vocals by Evans who settled down in YACHT and now feels she is just as important here as the project’s founder Bechtolt. Considering some degree of conceptuality of the record, the singer was on several occasions forced to change the tone and manner of her performance in order to reincarnate into one of the story’s characters. She makes you believe every word uttered by a false prophet in Holy Roller, and obey the call to join the universal jubilation in Paradise Engineering. With such a strong vocalist on his side, the music manager Jon Bechtolt, in his turn, also has to show something new and brave to keep the equality of powers in their tandem. The piano passage in I Walked Alone is just one of the revelations we expect from an amazing instrumentalist he is.

Builders of dance paradise

The concluding part of Shangri La, the title song of the album, suggests that you should not go too far to come to an ideal world, or utopia, or paradise, just whatever you call it. The YACHT musicians believe the area lies somewhere in the Western part of the USA. As the lyrics of the song witnesses, they are ready to build the magic kingdom themselves and even offer you to stay. The entire Shangri La album material is a reply all those who occupy their minds with unsolvable problems, wasting time and nerves. YACHT teach us to take this problems like this: dance and don't worry. Some would not approve of this approach, particularly those who value words as much as music, but nobody twists their arms to buy YACHT albums or attend their gigs. As of those who support the fun-loving American duet, they can be sure Shangri La is the best work ever done by YACHT. The joining of the very talented singer and great ambitions of the project’s initiator will never let the formation stagnate. Even if next time it will once again be nothing more than just dance music, it will be a top-level product.